Northern Moon

Crafts ~ Recipes ~ Our New House ~ Book Reviews

May 19, 2014

I became a mother and our whole world changed. Cliché?
Maybe, maybe just honest. When I was pregnant with our first child, we talked
about how things would change when he was born, but I had no idea that our
world would be flipped completely upside down upon his arrival.

Our son was born healthy and howling 5 ½ weeks early. We
were not prepared at that point, mentally or materially, for his arrival. We
figured it out fast. He spent ten days in the NICU and we brought him home at
36 weeks gestation. Before we even left the hospital I had begun to worry about
going back to work.

I like my job. It pays well, I enjoy the people I work with,
and it is interesting. I’m not sure what more I could ask for as an employee.
There are things that are not so great, but I’m guessing that’s the case
everywhere. I was able to use 6 weeks of sick leave post birth and 4 weeks of
accrued vacation leave. I took the remaining 2 weeks unpaid. I broke up my
leave as 8 weeks full time and 10 weeks part time. For us, looking back, it was
a good decision. My husband went back to
work after two weeks and then took part time leave when I started back. All and
all we were able to hold off on needing childcare until he was almost five
months old.

That brings us to right now. I am back to work full time. I
am successful, I have a rewarding job and a happy baby. On the surface I would like to think that we
look like we have adjusted well to this parenting thing. The reality is I am
consumed with guilt over both taking him to a babysitter every day from now
until he hits kindergarten and guilt over the fact that I want to quit my job.
I want to work substantially less and spend more time with him. I want to raise
my child myself. How can I quit my hard earned well paid job that allows my
family to have extras and save money to put us in a much tighter financial situation?
Is that selfish? Why should I get the opportunity and not my husband? Will I
ever get back into my field? Make the same amount of money? Not likely.

How does one weigh the pros and cons of this when the pro is
so much more important and positive than any con, but the cons will stick
around and eat at you forever. I don’t think you can put a price tag on the
time spent with your child when they are growing up and everyday I think about
the fact that it is one more day I am missing with him. I can’t ever get them
back.

How can we as parents expect to raise good children if we
only see them for two hours each night and an hour each morning? I can see now
why parents have a hard time saying no to their kids. When you only see them a
couple hours each day, you don’t want to deal with cranky, angry children. It’s
easier to pacify them with what they want so you can continue to like each other
and not feel like you spend all your time together arguing. I don’t want that
for my son.

Conclusion: we as a family know what we would like to see
happen in our lives. Both of us would like to work less and spend more time
guiding and raising our son. We would like to maintain our incomes if possible,
if not, we need to supplement somehow. The problem lies in that we just don’t
know how to get from here, successful, educated career professionals, to
parents. At present, it’s a vicious cycle of talk and not act. Eventually,
hopefully sooner rather than later, we are going to need to make the tough
decisions. By putting our son first, I’m hoping that we can make the right
decisions for our family.

March 7, 2013

I am at the point in the house building process where I just
want to start packing up my current house. Anything that we don’t use everyday,
I have the urge to box it up and get it out. My husband has pointed out to me
more than once when I have brought this up, that we don’t even know that we
will for sure be building this spring. Phsshhh…details.

I am stalled out creatively at this point because I don’t
want to make any updates to our current house, knowing that we are leaving at
some point in the near future. So, what have I done about this? I’ve turned to
many blogs and Pinterest for many ideas for the new house. So many ideas, that
I am going to need to go back and organize my pinboards or I won’t even know
what I have.

So, if you know of anyone who has great pinboards for new
home construction, or just fun boards you like to follow, let me know. I’d love
to check them out. And if you would like a window into my style, go ahead and follow
one of my boards…I’ve linked to them below.

March 4, 2013

Not for me. Not today. I am so ready for sunshine and warmer
weather. Although, I must say, this has been one of my favorite Wisconsin
winters. I love snow and we have had it in abundance.

Anyway, today my project is to head over to one of our local
flooring outlets, Macco’s, and get a bid on flooring for our new place. I am so
torn over flooring.

Doug and I both agree on one thing, no carpeting. Between
his boots and the dogs, we are not carpet people. That leaves us with several
options. So far, from everything I have researched, I have narrowed it down to
this:

-Tile through the whole house

-High end wood laminate in the main living areas
and master bedroom, tile in the bathrooms and mud room.

-Laminate tile (I checked this out at Macco’s and
there were some pieces that I really liked)

-Bamboo or hardwood ( I am trying to stay away
from these as we are hard on floors and the upkeep on these might be pretty
ridiculous)

-Cork ( I
believe that cork is too soft for our household)

I
would love to hear some opinions/horror stories/suggestions on this. Anyone put
in all tile and later hated it? Is hardwood worth the upkeep? I’ve sanded and
redone a floor once, I don’t know that I ever want to do that again…..

March 2, 2013

My poor puppy. He cut his foot on some serious ice two weeks
ago and it is still not healed enough for him to be able to play outside. He’s
going a little stir crazy.

We got rain two weeks ago on top of the snow and it made a
thick crust. Doug took both dogs out to cut firewood with him and somehow in
the course of the day Griffin, our shorthair, cut his foot. It was bad, like,
you could see inside it bad. But, it was also very clean and being that it was
a Saturday night, I decided to clean it up and bandage it at home. I used
antibacterial ointment and gauze and wrapped him up. Thankfully, he is has not
chewed on it or tried to remove the bandage.

Also thankfully, it has remained infection free and so we
have not had to take him in to our vet. It is healing so slowly and he is going
absolutely stir crazy. I have never had
to play doctor to a deep cut like this before and it makes me nervous, but I’ve
been changing the bandage every night and making sure it isn’t swollen or hot,
so I think he’ll be okay. Has anyone else ever dealt with this? Anyone else
have dogs that they worry so much about?

Other than that, this is a busy weekend, I get to go up to
see my sisters and my nieces and nephew and Doug gets to go fishing. It’s March
1st people, here in the northwoods we are on the downhill slide to spring!

March 1, 2013

Life, as I know it, is crazy right now. Currently, my
husband and I are waiting to see if our house sells. We have a unique situation
going on here right now. When we bought our house in 2009, we bought it
quickly, with the specific purposes of

1. Getting the homebuyer’s tax credit,
and

2. Living here until and making enough improvements to resell it when we
are ready to build.

Good news, we are ready to build!

Bad news, the house must
sell for us to be able to build this year. If not, we’ll have to wait another
year to do it.

Good news, we have a potential buyer.

Bad news, the buyer is
our neighbor, who owns a butcher shop and wants to put up a store front. The
tricky part is, he has to present a business plan to his bank for the purchase
of the house(and the lot, which is what
he really wants) and the construction of the business. Translation, we are all
in a waiting game.

So, where are we in the construction process?

Well, we spent all fall developing a plan that we both
really love. It’s very non traditional, but for our style of living, it’s
extremely functional. Now that we have a finalized blueprint, I am so antsy to
get started on it.

Even though we have a finalized plan, there are still plenty
of things we need to figure out, and plenty of things that we disagree on. For
example, I would prefer the house be set further off the driveway, Doug, on the
other hand, thinks he wants to keep it closer to the driveway. This is just one
of the many disagreements we have, don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted as we go.

If, theoretically, everything come together here in the next
month, we will start digging sometime in May. Because of the lay of the land,
we will be digging a pond so that we have enough fill. I am excited about the
pond for many reasons, I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

I am also excited to keep you guys in the loop through the
blog. I’m looking forward to many updates in the coming months and I am so glad
I can get your opinions on things. Stop by and check out our progress and any
other goings on that we may have.

February 21, 2012

I like to experiment. With recipes. I will try just about anything I have at least half the ingredients for. Tonight I had a bag of apples sitting on my counter....meant to bait a porcupine, but that is another story for another time. If you ever have a snoring porcupine take up residence under your hunting shack, just email me, I've already done the research for you.

Anyway...Tonight I made Apple Dumplings from a random recipe I found. It required the peeling and coring of 6 medium apples,

Then I made a basic pastry crust, wrapped the apples, and put them in a too big pan. Note: if you are going to attempt to recreate these, you must must must must must use an 9x9 pan. Not a 9x13. The smaller pan will keep the juice juicy. Or something.

Don't be scared of the pastry dough either...it was very easy. Some good parchment paper will help as well. This was the finished product after 35 minutes in the oven at 400*. In the future, I will cover these for the first 20 minutes. Also, I will cook them in a smaller pan to enable the juice to remain juicy. Juicy enough or not, they were awesome and even better with ice cream.

Here is the recipe, complete with my after cooking experience modifications.